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lAL COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS— WMT IT HAS DONE. 



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ROSOOE COJ^KLma OF MW YORK, 



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. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 29, 1862. 



^'he House having under consideration the report of the 
select committee on Government contracts — 
Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING said: 
Mr. Speaker: On the 17th of July last, in 
common with about fifty other members of this 
House,! voted against the permission then asked 
by the committee on Government contracts to 
do much which since that time they have done. 
It was the opinion then of some of the oldest and 
most experienced members of the House that 
such a proceeding as that proposed would not 
be wise under any circumstances. It seemed so 
to me. It seemed to me that no committee could 
be so honest or so eminent that it would be 
suitable to clothe it with the unheard of powers 
asked for on that occasion. It seemed to me 
unfit to create a supervisory board and set it 
over all the Departments of the Government to 
review, at its own pleasure and in its own way, j 
the integrity and motive of eviery man engaged in 
the administration of public afftiirs. It seemed to i 
me that a rovingcommission, virtually irrespons- 
ible, to sit in judgment, open or secret, at its op- 
tion, upon the honesty or fraud of all future con- 
tracts and transactions, to be entered into by any 
Department ofthe Government, was open to grave 
objections, and found little argument in its favor 
of a kind calculated to commend it to the sound 
discretion of the House. We had at that time, 
as we have at all times, power to call for every 
contract from time to time, and to inspect and in- 
quire into all the transactions of each Depart- 
ment of the Government. We had then, as we 
have now, two standing committees, with but little 
occupation, whose duties are identical with those 
professed by this committee; we could instruct 
them as often as the House should deem it neces- 
sary to inquire and report; and therefore it seemed 
to me that the enormous powers asked for were 
fraught with dangerous objections, and likely to 
be productive of pernicious and odious results. 



The hesitation ofthe House, however, aroused 
the displeasure of at least one member of the com- 
mittee. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Dawes] felt himself attacked, and came to the- 
defense. He protested his innocence of bad mo- 
tives which no one had imputed to him; he denied 
several charges which no one had made, and 
hinted broadly that he would resign unless the 
House indulged him in the permissron asked for. 
That indulgence was granted, and I think it safe 
to say now, that experience has vindicated and 
approved every objection then insisted upon. The 
doings ofthe committee — its extraordinary doings 
—have led to the most wide-spread misapprehen- 
sions and exaggerations. They have filled the 
whole country with'indiscriminate suspicion and 
distrust. The political complexion of the com- 
mittee is such that its sayings and doings were cal- 
culated to have far greater efiect than would have 
been the case if it had stood in political antago- 
nism to the present Administration. Its flitting 
constantly from State to State, sometimes from 
one side ofthe Union to the other, the vague mys- 
tery in which it has been enshrouded, with its still 
vaguer givings out, its secret sessions, and above 
all, the sweeping and unmeasured declarations of 
some of its members, have engendered the belief, 
not only at home but abroad-^and I judge from 
the foreign papers, more abroad than at home — 
that corruption and venality are universal in this 
country, and that swindling and theft, like the 
frogs of Egypt, have entered the very kneading- 
troughs of the land. Such an impression is a 
wicked aspersion upon the American people; it is 
as false of them as of any nation in history, and 
if possible more false now in the hour of their pa- 
triotic trial than ever in the time of their pros- 
perity and peace. I charge no man with a design 
to do this great wrong, but it has been done, and 
as an humble lover of my country I deplore it 
with impatient regret. In addition to this all-em- 






bracing injury, proceedings of the committee have 
done injustice— pgjcoss, irreparable injustice, to in- 
dividuals and classes^ 'So much is admitted now, 
thoUjgi| not voluntarily admitted; but it is said to 
have OTisen from Inadvertence and mistake. So 
be it; that does not lighten the obloquy which has 
blasted private character aad public reputation. 

My proposition is that the nation, the Govern- 
ment, classes of individuals, and individuals them- 
selves, have suffered In character; that we have 
lost caste, and that much harm has come, not from 
detecting or exposing fraud or extravagance, but 
from magnifying and exaggerating what has hap- 
pened, and charging and publishing to the world 
what has never happened at all. The gentleman 
from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] said the other 
day, if I read him aright in the Globe, that the 
plundering under this present Administration had 
been as great as the expenditures under thathated 
dynasty which the people had hurled fcom power. 
Sir, if that statement is true, the American people 
would be justified in resorting to anything short 
of revolution to snatch power from men who wield 
it for such horrible prostitution. 

Mr. DAWES. I am sorry that the gentleman 
did not read me aright in the Globe. If he read 
me aright he would have seen that I said it would 
nearly equal that. 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. I will read the 
statement precisely as it appears in the Globe, re- 
vised by the gentleman himself. I have no pur- 
pose to do him an injustice. Said the gentleman 
from Massachusetts: 

" The gentleman must remember that in the first year of 
a Republican Administration, which came into power upon 
pi-of'essions of reform and retrenchment, there is indubita- 
i)le evidence abroad in tlie land tliat somebody has plun- 
dered the public Treasury well nigh in that single year as 
much as the entire current yearly expenses of llie Govern- 
ment during, the Administration whicli the people hurled 
from power because of its corruption." 

I say that if this statement can be verified the 
people would be warranted in rising en masse and 
demanding, by any means short of revolution, the 
correction of abuses and evils too intolerable and 
atrocious to be longer endured. 

Groundless as it may be, it has gone forth as 
an announcement by the committee — gone beyond 
recall. Yes, sir, a poisoned arrow, poisoned with 
the virus of exaggeration, and feathered with the 
franking privilege, has been shot far and wide to 
the remotest confines of the loyal States of the 
Republic. Like other statements and insinuations 
made by that gentleman, however elaborately they 
may have been prepared and conned over, this is 
a reproach, an impeachment of the existing Gov- 
ernment, which 1 think, on reflection, he will long 
to recall. But, sir, another evil, greater, perhaps, 
than any other, has resulted from these anom- 
alous proceedings. A system of semi-judicial, 
one-sided trial and condemnation has been inau- 
gurated for the first time, I am happy to know, in 
the history of the nation; a system which finds 
no place in any enlightened jurisprudence, nor in 
the genius ofany free Government, and no defense 
in any sound code of morals ; a system utterly sub- 
versive of the plainest principles and safeguards 
of justice and the rights of the citizen. Jurisdic- 



tion has been assumed of the characters of men, 
and their rights of property, and judgments blast- 
ing to both have been pronounced on ex parte test- 
imony, testimony taken in secret, and of which 
the parties aspersed were never informed. Men 
have thus been tried unheard, and convicted, stig- 
matized, and hung up to fester in infamy as long 
as their names can retain a place on the roll of 
remembered names. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts felt con- 
strained to admit the odious character of such a 
mode of investigation in ordinary cases; but he 
contended that the principle of justice embodied 
in the amendment offered by the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. Colfax] had no application here 
— and why, forsooth ? I ask the attention of the 
House to the distinction to which the gentleman 
from Massachusetts is driven — worthy, I must 
say, of this extraordinary age of invention, and 
of the strait in which the inventor finds himself 
placed. Why, says the gentleman, if you were 
only to deal with a man's character, you ought 
to give him notice and hear him; but if you are to 
deal with his character and properly too, then you 
may try andcondemn him unheard on ex parte test- 
imony. He says his committee was appointed 
to investigate fraud " in contracts," and notjn 
persons, and that, therefore, they were right in 
organizing a star chamber, and condemning men 
without their knowing that they were accused; 
cleaving down the rights and characters of citi- 
zens, and leaving them to find it out when some 
abstract of concealed evidence went over the wires, 
telegraphed from the West or from the East, and 
only confirmed when this report came in as a sort 
of corollary at the commencement of this session. 
The gentleman must have borrowed somebody's 
thunder, I think, before making that suggestion. 
He must have heard learned lawyers talk who 
have declared that if you fairly try and convict a 
man as a traitor, you cannot take away his lands; 
but if you only call him a traitor, and assume that 
he is a traitor, you can take all his property for- 
ever by a little proceeding in rem; so the gentle- 
man considers this a proceeding in rem, and thinks 
that he has violated no principle of justice or hu- 
manity in the investigations he has made, or in 
the indelible stigmas he has attempted to afllx. 

Sir, contracts do not commit fraud. Persons 
commit fraud. If there be fraud in a contract 
somebody has put it there, somebody has com- 
mitted it. I would like to know how to investi- 
gate frauds in contracts without bringing into 
question the character and acts of individuals. If 
the investigation was solely as to things, and did 
not relate to persons, I hope every member of the 
House will take home to himself this question: 
how came this committee to report and publish 
to the world the names of individuals and to pass 
final judgment on them as the guilty actors in 
transactions denounced in the report as worse than 
fraudulent? How comes it that theft is charged 
upon civilians and soldiers, and painted in colors 
blacker than the hues of common fraud or rob- 
bery, because laid at the door of those who stood 
in a double trust, not merely as citizens of this Re- 
public, upon whom confidence and lionors have 
been showered, in the hour of its agony, but as 



the sworn trustees to guard its Treasury and its 
funds? 

Sir, if the doctrine put forth by the gentleman 
from Massachusetts is sound, what becomes of 
the principle which lies at the foundation of the 
right of trial by jury? Wiiat did Edmund Burke 
mean when he said that the greatest object of 
civil government was to get twelve honest men 
into the jury box? What becomes of that prin- 
ciple inwrought with every jurisprudence, from 
the twelve tables down, which gave the Athenian, 
and has given the meanest culprit ever since, the 
right to say, " strike, but hear me?" The gen- 
tleman said that the gentleman from Indiana [IVIr. 
Colfax] complained the other day because the 
committee did not send for General Fremont and 
ask him to consult with them and assist them in 
the investigation of fraudulent contracts. No, 
sir. The gentleman from Indiana never said that. 
The gentleman from Indiana complained, and I 
say " Amen," that not the committee, but a frac- 
tion of it, went to the far West, and in the ab- 
sence of a major general in the field, while he 
stood facing the enemies of his country, privily, 
clandestinely, collected ex parte and even hearsay 
evidence against him, tending to blast his charac- 
ter as a general, as a citizen, and as a man, and 
came back with it in their pocket, never inform- 
ing him that he had been drawn into question; 
never giving him an opportunity to offer an ex- 
planation or to hand in the name of a witness. 
That, if I apprehended the gentleman from In- 
diana, was the complaint he made. I refer to it 
now merely as an illustration, because I have 
other matters to discuss within my hour than the 
rights or wrongs of Major General Fremont. 

It may be that the committee deemed all its acts 
entirely defensible; but that is not the question, 
and will not be the question for us to pass upon. 
The House must, for itself and in its own behalf, 
pronounce its own judgment as to the just and 
proper mode in which committees should pro- 
ceed. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts evinced 
great sensitiveness and emotion at the idea that the 
committee might be discharged by the House. 
There seems no reason for his taking the matter so 
much to heart, and he must have mistaken some- 
what the spirit in which such a motion may be 
made or supfjorted. I suppose that in theory of 
parliamentary law, at least, a committee has no 
interest in such a question, pro or con. Commit- 
tees are creatures of the House, and the body which 
had the power to give has the power to take away. 
I should be very sorry to have it supposed, when 
I vote — as I shall whenever the opportunity is pre- 
sented — to dissolve the committee, that my action 
implied any personal discourtesy to any gentleman 
of the House, whether he be a member of the com- 
mittee or not. Gentlemen around me say that 
these are their sentiments also. The simple idea' 
is, that this is a pioneer experiment, anew thing, 
never tried before, and it has turned out badly, and 
the House ought to dispense with it. 

And now, sir, having spoken of some evils, 
which, I think, have flowedfrom raising this com- 
mittee and enlarging its powers, I would like to 
put the question, what practical good has resulted 



from these unusual proceedings to offset the harm 
it must be admitted they have done? 

It is claimed in the first place, as I understand, 
that frauds have been detected which, without 
such a committee, would not have been found out. 
It is claimed, in the second place, that money has 
been saved by the committee, which would other- 
wise have been lost. 

Mr. Speaker, I have taken some pains to inform 
myself on both these points, and do not under- 
stand that either of them can be successfully main- 
tained. I think no fraud has even been developed 
by the committee which would have remained 
buried had they not dug it up. Their reportsets 
out with the steamboat Cataline. Well, sir, that 
affair was notorious all over the State of New 
York before I left my home to come to the ses- ' 
sion at which this committee was created. It 
passed in review in a court of justice, where the 
witnesses were called /iro and con., many months 
ago. So with the purchase of ships by George 
Morgan, in New York; that, too, was publicly 
known, the knowledge of it was as public as the 
New York Herald could make it before the com- 
mittee ever gave it its attention. So with regard 
to the fortifications at St. Louis. 

Mr. HOLMAN. Will the gentleman from 
New York inform the House what information he 
had in reference to the fortifications at St. Louis 
prior to the last session of Congress, and also 
what investigation had occurred before a court of 
justice in reference to the Cataline before we ad- 
journed last summer? 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. My friend puts 
two questions to me, which I will be happy to 
answer, though they both rest upon false prem- 
ises. I did not say that the matter of the steam- 
boat Cataline had been investigated in court be- 
fore the adjournment of the last session. I said 
it had been done many months ago. 

Mr. HOLMAN. I ask the gentleman whether 
he did not intend to leave the impression that this 
investigation took place before the organization of 
this committee ? 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. I intended most 
specifically to leave the impression that nothing 
in this report that I have ever read, or that any 
man has read, has added one scintilla of material 
fact to that which was notorious before the report 
was made, and notorious by means of informa- 
tion totally independent of the committee. I mean 
to say that I heard in general about the affair at 
my home, and heard the particulars about it in 
the city of New York on my way to the session 
of Congress which created the committee. 

Mr. HOLMAN. I trust the gentleman will 
answer my question. I ask him whether he did 
not intend to convey the impression upon the mind 
of the House that this investigation occurred be- 
fore the creation of the committee? 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. I should be happy 
to oblige the gentleman, if I could make the admis- 
sion he asks me to; but I cannot. Candor com- 
pels me to answer that I did not intend to create 
any such impression. If I had, I should have 
been very likely to say so, as it is quite my habit 
to say what I mean. I repeat, that there may be 
no doubt about my meaning, that the affair of the 



steamboat Cataline was notorious in the country 
before this committee was raised , and that it passed 
in review before a court in New York long months 
ago. I had no other impression upon my own 
mind, and I intended to convey no other. 

The other question of the gentleman from In- 
diana about the fortifications at St. Loius being a 
topic of discussion before our adjournment last 
summer, seems to me very far fetched, because 
those fortifications were not built before that ad- 
journment, and if they did not exist at that time, 
perhaps the gentleman will be able himself to 
judge how long they had then been talked about. 
'What I say is, that those fortifications, and iheir 
alleged extravagance, had become food for item- 
men of newspapers and others before the com- 
mittee ever saw thenijOr took testimony about 
them. This is true, not only of the fortifications, 
but of the trash relating to the department of the 
West. The fifty pairs of kid gloves, the retinue 
of mounted men going to Jeflferson City, the 
splendor of quarters and equipage, and a great 
variety of clap-trap was got up by those who had 
the advantage of the committee of being earlier on 
the ground. My friend from Indiana, [Mr. Col- 
fax,] in a letter written, I believe, to his own 
paper in Indiana, had referred fully to all that 
history and tattle along time before. 

Mr. COLFAX. I d'id not indorse the tattle. 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. No, sir; the gen- 
i tleman did not indorse or countenance it in any 
way. Now, I return to the statement that I am 
not aware that a single transaction has been un- 
earthed by this committee which, without their 
excavations, has not become known to the public. 

Mr. DAWES. 1 dislike to interrupt the gen- 
tleman from New York. 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. It gives me great 
pleasure to yield to the gentleman. 

Mr. DAWES. I should like to have my friend 
tell us what he knew of the New Bedford and 
Starbuck matter until the investigation was made 
by the committee, the matter disclosed, and the 
money paid back? 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. Oh, Mr. Speaker, 
I should not have forgotten the Starbuck-New- 
Eedford matter. That is a part of my case. That 
has been paraded and reparaded; it has appeared 
and disappeared and reappeared, and been made 
to stalk over the stage; the changes have been 
rung upon itas something for which the gratitude 
of the nation was due to the rescuers of ^6,166 48, 
until no man could forget the New Bedford trans- 
action, even if he wanted to. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts said the 
other day in his speech that he and his associates 
hadsaved "/aftwiows" sums of money to the Treas- 
ury. I have read somewhere that the actor Gar- 
rick once said that he would give a hundred pounds 
if he could say " Oh," as Whitfield did. Sir, I 
would give a hundred pounds, if I was not too 
poor, if I could only say '^fabulous," as the gen- 
tleman from Massachusetts did. Yes, sir, fabu- 
lous indeed, entirely fabulous. [Laughter.] 

Let us see a little about the dollars and cents 
which these gentlemen have saved to the Govern- 
ment. In the first place, this report puts forth — 
and the gentleman from Massachusetts, with that 



extreme temperance and moderation of assertion 
which is one of his distinguishing characteristics, 
repeated the other day that $6,166 48 was saved 
to the Treasury — " we saved it," says the gentle- 
man, $6,166 48; that is the amount exactly; it is 
engraved on my memory. The gentleman im- 
presses us with a vague belief that by some sort 
of alchemy, by some sleight-of-hand, known only 
to the committee, this amount of specie was ex- 
tracted from the crucible of fraud, lugged all the 
way to Washington, and dropped into an empty 
Treasury, resounding as it struck the bottom. 
[Laughter.] 

Now, I undertake, confining myself to evidence 
before us, to say that the committee on Govern- 
ment contracts no more recovered this money, no 
more determined the question whether it should 
be returned to the Treasury, than I did, not a bit. 

What was done in this case.' Mr. Aspinwall, 
of New York, one of the men who has run the 
gauntlet of this committee, and remains undefiled 
with the soil of accusation — Mr. Aspinwall, of 
New York, recommended to Commodore Breeze 
a man by the name of Starbuck, to buy vesseig. 
Starbuck went to New Bedford, and bought two 
vessels, the Roman and the Badger. He paid a 
small sum and turned them over to the Govern- 
ment for a large sum, which he was ])aid, and 
$6,166 48 is the amount of over payment. The 
committee claim, in the grave language of the gen- 
tleman from Massachusetts, that they brought 
back and put into the Treasury this amount of 
money; it must have happened when they came 
back from a foray on one of those " gay and fes- 
tive" occasions when they " took the field in per- 
son" to investigate contracts. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, let us look for a moment at 
the title by which the committee is to hold the 
credit of saving this sum. Atone of the first meet- 
ings of the committee, they called, as we might 
have done, upon the Navy Department, for a com- 
plete statement of contracts and purchases, with 
the names and residence of the parties. On reach- 
ing the city of New York, they called before them 
Commodore Breeze, and this was before going to 
New Bedford at all — and I am now partly upon a 
rejoinder to the point of which my friend from 
Indiana [Mr. Holman] is tenacious — I want to 
show him, not only that the money could have 
been recovered without acommittee,but that there 
was no Christopher Columbus upon this commit- 
tee, no man who discovered a continent or even a 
fraud. Commodore Breeze, in his statement be- 
fore the committee, conveyed to them fully for all 
practical purposes, preliminary to the Govern- 
ment instituting legal proceedings, the facts and 
circumstances in regard to this transaction. And 
what is more important still, he testified that he 
had already given the facts to the Department. 
They asked him if these vessels had recently 
changed hands before the Government had re- 
ceived them. I will read from his testimony: 

'* Answer. I heard indirectly that they had been sold at a 
much less price to snifleUody else, whether at auction or 
not I do not If now. But the Government paid about seven 
t4jousand three hundred dollars each for them. VVIien I 
got then) to the doeliof the yard J had to expend some two 
thousand dollars upou them by way of repairs. 

" Question. Who was this agent you employed .' 



" Answer. His name was Starbuck. 
" Question. Of whom did he make the purchase? 
" Answer. They were citizens of New Bedfordj but I do 
not recollect their names." 

Then follows a statement about the arrangement 
made by Mr. Aspinwall for the payment for these 
vessels; and then comes this evidence: 

" Q,uestion. Who made the payment? 

" Answer. Mr. Aspinwall ; and hence I wrote to the De- 
partment at Washington that, under the circumstances, I 
desired that Mr. Aspinwall might be considered the pur- 
chaser and not myself. They acceded to that request, in- 
asmuch as I was ordered to coal the vessels and dispatch 
them. 

" Question. At what price did you understand that these 
vessels liad been purchased sliortly before they were pur- 
chased by the Government.' 

" Answer. A letter was written to one of my lieutenants, 
by a resident of New Bedford, expressing his surprise at 
the price paid, and stated that the vessels had been sold a 
short time before for $2,500 each. 

" Question. Were the vessels worth more than $2,500 
each .' 

" ^inswer. One of them certainly was not; and the other, 
after we put the repairs on her, niiglit have been worth about 
what we paid for her. 

" Qiiesiion. State whether you informed the Navy Depart- 
ment of the circumstances under which these vessels were 
purchased through the agency of Mr. Aspinwall? 

" Jlnswer. Certainly." 

Now, Mr. Speaker, after that testimony was 
delivered, thecommittee wentto New Bedford, and 
there the collector of that port and some other 
public officers and a commission merchant ap- 
peared before them and told the story over again 
more fully than Commodore Breeze had done, but 
whether more fully than he had communicated to 
the Department, does not appear. Shortly after- 
ward the district attorney of the southern district 
of New York instituted proceedings for the re- 
covery of the money. In consequence of these 
proceedings, Starbuck disgorged and paid back 
the money to Mr. Cisco, the sub-Treasurer at New 
York, and a certificate of that fact was handed to 
the committee, and they sent it by mail to the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, and then put down in their 
journal, with solemn formality, that on such a day 
was transmitted to the Secretary of the Treasury, 
through the acting chairman of the committee, a 
certificate of deposit with Mr. Cisco for $6,166 48. 

Now, my point is this: Commodore Breeze had 
ascertained this fraud and had lodged in the Navy 
Department information of the fact. The remain- 
ing step necessary was to direct the district attor- 
ney for the southerli district of New York to pros- 
ecute the claim, and I want to know whether it 
was necessary to send a committee of seven mem- 
bers of this House, with a stenographer and Ser- 
geant-at-Arms, all the way up to New Bedford to 
see the collector of the customs there and others, 
who have constant communication with the Gov- 
ernment here, and are no doubt frequently here 
themselves; and especially when Starbuck, the 
known actor in the matter, was all the time a busi- 
ness man, not in New Bedford, but in New York .-' 

Mr. DAWES. The gentleman omits to state 
that, after all these papers were laid before the 
Navy Department by Commodore Breeze, the 
Navy Department nevertheless paid for the vessel 
the full price asked for by this charter; and he 
omits to state — I suppose because it did not at- 
tract his attention — that the reason the district 



attorney instituted process was because the com- 
mittee, on their return from New Bedford, laid 
their testimony before him, and was in his oflice 
when it was instituted, and when the money waa 
paid over. I suppose that that did not attract his 
attention. 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. Will the Chair 
be kind enough to inform me how much time I 
have left.? 

The SPEAKER. Eighteen minutes. 

Mr. DAWES. Permit me 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. The gentleman 
will pardon me, I trust, for declining to yield fur- 
ther; my time is so nearly gone. 

Mr. DAWES. I do not want to consume the 
gentleman's time. 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. Let me set the 
gentleman right about his facts. Neither the Navy 
Department nor the Government ever paid Star- 
buck at all. Howland & Aspinwall paid him, 
having advanced the money or credit to him be- 
fore he left New York to buy the ships. All the 
Government had to do with making payment was 
to reimburse Howland & Aspinwall. This was 
done, of course. They had advanced the mftney 
in good faith, and were entitled to its repayment 
on every principle of equity, regardless of Star- 
buck's acts. This disposes of all the gentleman 
says 1 omitted to state, except that the Govern- 
ment had not been as expeditious as it might have 
been, and in ordinary times probably would have 
been, in taking steps to reclaim from Starbuck 
the excess of money in his hands. This is as 
natural as it is true. The pressure of events has 
been such that, no doubt, all classes of prosecu- 
tions directed by the Executive Departments at 
Washington are far in arrears, unless, perhaps, it 
be those of a very important public nature. But 
it would all have come in due time, committee or 
no committee. I am fully persuaded that it is an 
error to suppose that a congressional committee 
was needed, or essentially useful, either in the 
Starbuck or the Boker matter, which latter has 
been referred to as a saving of $1,300,000 by the 
committee. The Boker contract, as will be seen 
from Ihereport of General Ripley, (pp. 75 to 84, in- 
clusive,) needed no investigation or action beyond 
that instituted by the appropriate Department. 
The whole facts were of record in the War Office, 
and underwent thorough scrutiny there in the 
regular old-fashioned way. The matter was re- 
ferred to the commission on contracts for arms, 
and after that was adjusted by the Secretary of 

Now, Mr. Speaker, passing by several other 
things, I come to the cost of such investigations. 
The present committee is an expensive luxury; it 
can hardly be deemed one of the necessaries of 
life; I do not know but it should have been taxed 
in the tax bill, as one of the showy ornaments of 
legislation. There is an expense account which 
ought to be preserved as one of the relics of the 
rebellion, and I propose to take it out and air it a 
little this morning. The gross sum cannot yet be 
stated accurately, but I understand that 00,000 
has already been received by these gentlemen, who 
have made the tour of the continent at the public 
expense. In addition to this sum considerable 



6 



amountG are still outstanding. These amounts are 
thousands more, I call the attention of the House 
to the journal of the committee, containing as it 
does, ail entry such as otherjournals do notcontain, 
an entry which I commend to the curious and the 
honest. While the committee remained here, that 
is before it began to rove, two things are notice- 
able in its journal; one is, that it was content with 
the homely phraseology of civil life, and the other 
is, that some one was responsible as the author 
and mover of the resolutions of the committee. 
The form was, "on motion of Mr. So and So, 
resolved." But when they took the field, they 
dropped resolved and adopted the more expressive 
and authoritative military term of "ordered." 
One of the first orders they made, is an order which 
Kobody stands sponsor for; it is anonymous and 
rteeds to be carefully read to be comprehended. I 
commend it to those accomplished in the science 
•of statutory construction, and to those who would 
iike to know how money is sometimes rapidly 
acquired. Here it is, August 29, 1861, at New 
York .: 

" Ordered, That the Sergeant-at-Arms be directed to pay, 
as a ffd.it of Hie expenses of this committee, tlie traveling 
and other necessary expenses of the several members there- 
of, and also llieir necessary traveling and other expenses 
while attending to the duties of tlie committee; the allow- 
ance for traveling from their respective places of residence, 
and pay while on the duties of the committee to be the 
same as that usually paid to witnesses." 

That is twenty cents a mile, ten cents each way, 
an d a per diem of two dollars beside. Now, sir, 
there a^e some unpleasant rumors on this subject 
owing to " mistakes of the printer," or to " con- 
founding different men of the same name." It is 
said that members of this reform committee have 
taken the amount of money indicated there, and 
had their expenses profusely paid beside out of 
the impoverished public Treasury. I can hardly 
believe it. I suggest to the lawyers of the House 
somequestions in regard to such an appropriation 
of public money to private use 'merely as ques- 
tions of law. The Constitution of the United 
States says that Representatives in Congress shall 
receive a compensation to be " ascertained by law." 
That ds what the Constitution says. The law 
says that each Representative shall receive $6,000 
a Congress — that is, for the two sessions — and 
mileage by the most usually traveled route from 
his home to the capital. That, then, is the amount 
"ascertained bylaw." Now, if there is any law or 
warrant anywhere by which f5,000, besides all 
their pay, had been put into the pockets of certain 
members of this body before they made their re- 
port on the 17th of December — and some thou- 
sands more have been taken since that time — I 
should Jike to hear that statute read, even though 
it should consume all my time. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. 
Dawes,] in his modest recitals of his labors, stated 
that he had ridden and ridden " while others 
S'kpt." There is something very touchingin that; 
Jack Downing would have called it "teching." On 
a previous occasion the same gentleman asserted 
that he had ridden six thousand miles "without 
compensation." I confess, in thelightof the facts as 
they turn out, these long rides are hard; they must 
be s© irksome and fatiguing. I pity the gentleman, 



as I see him now in my mind's eye the chosen 
champion of economy, the knight-errant of scru- 
pulous honesty and pecuniary exactness, mounted 
on his favorite Rosanante, attended by hisfaithful 
Sancho Panza, the sergeant-at-arms, and attended 
further by a stenographer to record his heroic 
struggles with those who would take anything 
from the Treasury, leaving his home slowly and 
sadly, in these troublous times, and proceeding 
from Boston to St. Louis, from St. Louis to New 
Bedford, from New Bedford to Harrisburg, from 
Harrisburg to New York, and all for the low price 
of twenty cents a mile, besides free living and pay 
per diem. There is nothing like it for cheapness; 
it beats the showman's advertisement where he 
says," thespeakingpig,thefatboy,TomThumb, 
and the slippery wiggler, and all for the low price 
of one shilling." Now, Mr. Speaker, this com- 
mittee never received from this House, eyen if the 
House could give it, any permission to take this 
money and convert it to private use. On the con- 
trary, the resolution was, 

"That the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House be directed to 
attend in person, or by assistant, the sittings of the com- 
mittee, and serve all the subpenas put into his hands by tha 
committee, pay the fees of all witnesses, and the necessary 
expenses of the committee." 

There is not a shadow of right to mileage here, 
still less to per diem. 

They report, December 17, that" the members" 
had traveled betwee<j six and seven thousand 
miles. This would amount, in mileage alone, 
without per diem or expenses up to that time, to 
about five thousand dollars. 

Mr. F. A. CONKLING. Has any other com- 
mittee taken it? 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLTNG. None that I have 
ever heard of. 1 had the honor once to serve on 
a special investigating committee, and it went to 
New York, and rode " while others slept," and 
worked while others slept; but no man on that 
committee ever dreamed of taking mileage and 
per diem. My colleague asks whether members 
of any other committee have taken mileage or per 
diem. If the Covode committee did so, my col- 
league [Mr. Olin] will know it; he was a member 
of it. If the committee on the conduct of the war 
has done so, no doubt some gentleman will be 
found to state it. If the Kansas committee took 
a cent beyond actual expenses, somebody will 
know it. I state the facts as they are, with no 
desire to wound any man ; but if we are to have a 
committee costing twenty or thirty thousand dol- 
lars up to this time, assailing men and blackening 
their characters — whether justly or unjustly I will 
not say at this moment — 1 say that it behooves us 
to know whether it does any good, and how much 
it costs ; and in these times it behooves us to know 
whether any one is rifling the Treasury, either 
inside or out. 

One other thing I should like to have explained 
before leaving this point. Until by accident — a 
hint being given me very recently — I discovered 
the little " order" on the journal, hid away in the 
ponderous volume of testimony, too big to be 
opened, I had relied upon a statement in the re- 
port of the committee, and was,of course, totally 
deceived — as every one must be — as to the amount 



of money absorbed by the committee, and for 
what purpose it had gone. 

Page 2 of the report contains this passage: 

"The expenses of the committee paid thus far, (except- 
ing tlie pay of the stenographer,) being for the traveling and 
other expenses of the committee, for the mileage and fees 
of witnesses, for the mileage and fees of the Sergearit-at- 
Arms, for messenger hire, ior stationery, rent of rooms, 
telegraphing, express charges, &c., amount to the sum of 
$5,153 38." 

Is tliat statement true, sir? 

When speaking of witnesses and the Sergeant- 
at-Arms^the report uses the words " mileage and 
fees;" but when speaking of the committee, the 
words are "traveling and other expenses." Was 
this accidental ? Was it " a mistake of the printer" 
which makes a distinction between what witnesses 
received and what the members of the committee 
took? Why did not the report inform us that 
mileage and pay, besides their pay as Represent- 
atives, had been taken ? If we were not to be told 
this, would it not have been enough to conceal 
and suppress the fact without a positive affirma- 
tive misstatement? 

It shows, Mr. Speaker, that a little mileage is 
a dangerous thing. That is what Pope would say 
if he lived now. Mileage is like liquor, if tasted 
4il excess men become slaves to it; but it usually 
takes long to fasten the habit in so inveterate a 
degree as would seem to be the case here. I do 
not see how it can have become so aggravated a 
case in so short a time. If there had been any- 
body on the committee who ever heard of a Rep- 
resentative who for many years successively made 
a mistake every year of six or seven hundred 
miles in certifying the distance of his home from 
the capital, and thus put in his pocket perhaps 
$489, not his own, year after year, that would have 
accounted for it. But as it is, who can account 
for it? 

It must be admitted that rather a dubious ex- 
ample has been set, and that a precedent has been 
established which is not good for the frugality or 
for the morals of the nation. 

Now, there are various other things, all in rem, 
which 1 would like to remark upon, and which I 
should not omit if I had time; but I suppose my 
time has substantially expired, and I would in- 
quire again how much time I still have? 

The SPEAKER. Ten minutes. 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. That's a long 
lease here, and it gives me time to speak of this: 
the other day, when the gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts [Mr. Dawes] had the floor, and had 
spoken as long as by the rules of the House any 
member is entitled to speak, I objected to his con- 
tinuing. When he resumed the floor he went 
through the ceremony of an apology to me, which 
was partly inaudible where I sat, and unintelli- 
gible for another reason, as I happened to be out 
of the House during that portion of his preceding 
remarks which had most pointed reference to me. 

But looking at the Globe the next day, I saw 
what the design of the gentleman was. It was to 
convey to the House the impression that I felt 
oflTended at the pleasantry which he had indulged 
concerning me, and retaliated upon him with an 
objection for that reason. I had assigned a dif- 
ferent reason for my objection, and how far it be- 



came the gentleman, how far it was proper, anci 
how far it was egotistical, to make the siiggestion 
that he had wounded my feelings, is a question 
for him. I heard enough of his speech to regret 
deeply what I heard, and on no account personal 
to myself. I heard enough of his speech to believe 
that it was not calculated to promote those objects 
which he professed to have in view, and I was 
weary of hearing the gentleman's wail se defend- 
endo, and of hearing him drag into common sus- 
picion half, if not all, the officers of the Govern- 
ment. From the report of his speech, it must 
have been, as a success, the most magnificent 
affair on record. The gentleman seems to have 
roamed through the House like the stately boar 
of the forest, tearing with his tusks, and tossing 
into the air every one he encountered; the ground 
must have been strewn far and wide with the man- 
gled bodies of his victims. Judging from the 
amount of laughter and applause which appears 
in the report, revised and improved by the gen- 
tleman himself, it must have been the wittiest, the 
funniest, the most excruciatingly side-splitting 
production that was ever brought forth, even by the 
gentleman himself. Among other things, he made 
himself most merry at my expense; and I want 
to admit that fairly and most effectually he put 
the laugh upon me. That is all right. But a great 
man has said that it is not from the laughers alone 
that the philosophy of history is learned. 

A few days ago, when the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] was speaking of the 
young man Sacchi, who has been gibbeted by the 
committee at the cross-roads of public opinion. as 
a swindler, I was thinking of another stranger 
who came from the vine-clad hills of France, and 
ranged himself by the side of our fathers upon the 
bloody battle-fields of the American Revolution. 
The stranger of whom I was thinking is he whose 
picture alone, by the side of Washington's, is al- 
lowed to adorn the tapestries of this Hall. I rec- 
ollected that in 1824,when La Fayette revisited this 
country, one of New England's orators applied to 
him, in the city of Boston, some beautiful words 
which had lingered long in my memory. And, 
struck, as the gentleman was speaking, with the 
general parallel between the stranger who came 
then and the stranger who came now to espouse 
our cause, I made application of the quotation to 
the case in hand. It was a needless thing; it was 
an ill-judged thing, if ^ou please, but it injured no 
one, and might have given a harmless pleasure to 
him, I meant to praise. The gentleman from Mas- 
sachusetts [Mr. Dawes] thinks it was poetry, and 
poor poetry. Well, there was a time when Charles 
Sprague held distinguished eminence in the re- 
public of letters, and it was God's mercy to him 
that he did not live in Massachusetts at a time 
when the proprieties of speech have been so highly 
cultivated there that his sentences are tawdry and 
offensive to the delicate, fastidious ears of the dis- 
tinguished gentleman who represents one district, 
at least, I do not know but more, of the glorious 
old Commonwealth. 

But I have another purpose in referring to this 
now; one member of this committee said yester- 
day that he had not heard yet who Sacchi was; 
and iu pitiful imitation of the gentleman from 



8 



iVTassachusetts, he broke down in the attempt to 
plagiarize a laugh by repeating over again the 
words I had quoted from Sprague, that he " fought 
for freedom in freedom's holy land." I do not 
know Sacchi; I never saw him; but I know his 
story as it was told me by General Fremont, and 
I will repeat it as well as I can remember it. He 
said that when clouds of revolution had gathered 
here, and the first muttering of the storm began 
to be heard in Europe, there came to him in Paris 
a young man bringing letters of introduction and 
testimonials from the highest military and social 
sources in France and Italy. He had been the 
companion in arms of Garibaldi, and had served 
with honorable distinction in theltalian campaign, 
which had then recently closed. He said to Gen- 
eral Fremont, " I see by the public journals that 
there is to be a struggle of arms on the continent 
of America, and if so, I wish to cast in my lot 
with those who strike for constitutional liberty 
and the maintenaiice of the American Republic." 
General Fremont told him that, as an American 
citizen, he thanked him for his sympathy, but had 
no authority to offer him position, nor even to 
say that his services would be accepted. After a 
brief interview they parted, and General Fremont 
soon returned home, and in, perhaps, the dark- 
est and most portentous hour of American his- 
tory was assigned to the department of the West. 
One morning a stranger was announced, and the 
general was surprised to recognize the young sol- 
dier with whom he had conversed in Paris. But 
there he was; he said, " I am still bent upon my 
purpose; I have followed you across the ocean, 
and all I ask is to fight under the starry banner of 
<4 your great Republic." General Fremont attached 



him to his staff, and he remained while his chief 
remained; and I understand that to this hour he 
has never asked or received a farthing from the 
Government he has served. 

Mr. HOLMAN. I wish to ask the gentle- 
man 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. No, sir; I de- 
cline to yield. 

Mr. HOLMAN. I hope the gentleman from 
New York will 

Mr. ROSCOE CONKLING. I decline to yield. 
I decline absolutely. I repeat again every state- 
ment I made the other day — I repeat again, for so 
the letters presented to General Fremont attested, 
that this slandered stranger was decorated for con- 
spicuous bravery upon the burning battle-fields of 
Italy. I repeat again that he followed the star of 
liberty across the sea, not for pay, but because 
he believed — who laughs at Sacchi now ? 

[Here the hammer fell.] 

Note. — The next day the following resolution 
was adopted — yeas 90, nays 41. 

Resolved, That the course adopted by the naval investi- 
gating committee of 1859, of communicating to officers o^ 
the Government copies of evidence apparently adverse to 
them, and giving them the opportunity to cross-examirje, 
the witnesses against tliem, or to refute or explain ,^heir . 
testimony is, in the opinion of this House, worthy of imi- 
tation wherever practicable, by investigating committees 
appointed by order of the House of Representatives, espe- 
cially where the said committees receive and collect such 
testimony in secret session ; and that it is contrary to the 
plainest principles of justice to condemn any citizen upon 
ex parte evidence taken against him by a committee in 
secret, and the purport of which has not, if practicable, been 
laid before him by said committee, with an opportunity to 
explain or refute it before their report. 



Printed at the office of the Congressional Globe. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 701 794 5 



